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Now new brain research is showing that laughter’s cousin, play, yields both physical and mental health benefits, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle May 26.

“The opposite of play is not work, but depression,” said Stuart Brown, M.D., psychiatrist and leading expert on the subject. Many Access Bars™ facilitators have discovered that doing the Access Bars™ alone is an effective antidote to depression. The added benefits science now knows, about how the humor and processing works, may be contributing to this. Many have become Access Bars™ facilitators just because Access Bars™ helped them get over being depressed and unhappy all the time.

Brown first got interested in the importance of play when he discovered its presence or absence was a huge component in the difference in upbringing of young men convicted of murder and the “normal” population.

Brown defines play as “apparently purposeless, voluntary, inherently appealing and potentially improvisational.” The same words could be used to describe the humor in a typical Access Consciousness™ class.

So now you have it! There is a valid scientific reason for all that raucous laughter and twisted humor that spills out of Access Consciousness™ workshops.

It’s not the first time that something Gary has discovered through asking questions and consciousness has been scientifically validated—much later. As he puts it, “Access Consciousness™ discovers it, then science catches up.”

This research gives us another reason why laughter and play can clear more than tears. Playful social interaction is “strongly affected by dopamine, endorphins, and other neurotransmitters that are also intimately linked to the motivational and pleasurable aspects of food, drugs, and sex.” Could this explain what Gary refers to as orgasmic living? Or the experience of having an Access Bars™ session that’s better than most sex you’ve had?

Tests by another researcher showed that play affects not the higher brain or cortex, but the most primitive parts of the brain. They are referring to the part of the brain that controls the “crazy mind,” the part of the brain and mind accessed by the Access Bars™ and clearing statements.

When facilitators say, “If you’re thinking, you’re stinking,” and “your mind is a terrible thing, lose it!” they are encouraging you to get out of the same part of the brain that is not engaged in the life-renewing aspects of play. How cool is that?

So don’t come to class or get your Access Bars™ run because it feels good! Do those things because science says it’s good for you! And we all know science couldn’t be wrong! To find a practitioner or class facilitator click here.